Olvand is a little multiplayer sandbox RPG, where the players live in self-built towns and can go on all kinds of adventures together. Imagine living with your friends in a small town in the mountains, or creating a new group of friends in a pub in the metropole you all live in. There will be several mini-games the inhabitants of a server can play together, among which will be combat based games like King of the Hill or Capture the Flag. You will be able to play against other people in your city, or as a city against another city, or as a whole server against another server. The combat works with self-built guns, in which all kinds of powers can be combined to create unique effects.

This seems to be an appropriate time and place to tell you more about what I have in mind for my game. I wish I could tell you EVERYTHING, but that would take me a week or so to write, so let's focus on the most important stuff.

A note before I start: this is speculation, just thinking out loud - these are in no way promises. It's very very likely that these features will indeed make it into the game (all features in the current game came from this same to-do list), but it's no guarantee.

A lot of different buildings in towns and cities, like main halls, pubs, post offices and banks. I hope this will help the inhabitants of these towns and cities to form real communities.

This is roughly how pubs and town halls look in my mind.

Paint, to give a personal touch to your house, cloths and vehicles. I hope every city will have its own look with regard to buildings, vehicles and fashion, so travelling and exploring will be a fun part of the game.

This can lead to colorful cities, if the inhabitants desire.

A lot of multiplayer minigames to be played against players of another city. Imagine a fishing contest, a race from one city to another in a vehicle you created yourself, or a massive game of tag with your city as the playground; defend the pride of your town!

A very simple type of race: just reach the flag first. I also want to add more complicated types. Also, this obviously is near a city where tophats are in fashion.

Lots of building styles, so each city will look different. The idea is that every city can pick its own architectural style, and so will have its own feel.

Two ideas for building styles.

Huge living forests full of different kinds of animals and plants. Imagine discovering a colorful field of all kinds of flowers in the middle of a forest, carefully trying to approach a large group of rare, deerlike animals, or birds on town squares. This will also include randomly generated species of plants and animals unique to your server, and rideable Alots.

It's true (if I can get permission, at least).

Roads and railways to be built by the players themselves. As the world is going to be huge, travelling from one big city to another might take way too much time, even in the quickest vehicle. Therefore, I hope to add roads and railways to speed up the process. Travelling on the train could be a nice way to meet other players as well.

Imagine walking around on a new server, wondering how much progress the inhabitants have made, and then suddenly walking into this; for railroads to be profitable, you need multiple big cities! By the way, I imagine following railroads (or actually getting on the train, if you've got the money) will be a thing done a lot by people new to the server, to discover the important places quickly.

Randomly generated caves. Beating a boss together is fun, but gets boring when done multiple times. I will try to add 'magic caves' that will give a brand new experience every time you play them, and that will become more difficult once they notice they're too easy for you and your companions.

Complex politics (with parties and parliaments, etc.). Communities need leaders of course, and by adding the game of politics (elections, parties, parliaments, etc.) I hope to make this game a richer experience.

One profession per player, which gives them an ability other players don't have. Professions have to be taught to you by another player, and can be made even more unique by working together with someone who has another profession. A writer and an engineer working together will be able to reverse engineer blueprints from items, for example.

Diseases, which will spread like in real life.

Something with music made by players.

A tutorial before you start.

Much more content: more olbs, more caves, more cloths, more vehicles, more architectural styles, etc.

I get attached to games alot easier when being developed, thats how i fell in love with minecraft and hopefully how I will fall in love with this :D I don't see why not though, this looks way better then most games i've been tracking.

I would love to test this game it reminds me quite a lot of when I first tested out Haven and Hearth one I have suggestion is that maybe perma death be implemented in the game I love a game with perma death such as dieing from a disease or murder or poison i think it would make this game quite more interesting and may be open pvp zone. This game along with crawle and Haven and Hearth seem all to similar in some aspect but I hope this one turns out to beat all of them because (Haven and hearth is no longer supported by it developers and crawle has ****** multilayer this seems to be the best out of all of them hope your game grows)

Very interesting comment! There will be a lot of PvP for sure: 1v1 combat in the general world is already implemented (called 'Duels'), and a big King of the Hill arena is very high on my to-do list. I've also been thinking about permadeath, since it works so well in games/mods like DayZ, Project Zomboid and Minecraft. If I can find a way to integrate it into the game (and I'm pretty sure I can), I will definitely implement it!

One thing about perma death be careful on how you implement it because A lot of People gave up on Haven and Hearth right away because PVPs and Trollers and griefer who took the perma death to there advantage on noobies and the high learning curve they had to over come in this game pvp and griefing became a common thing with in the game the game became impossible to play alone if your not with a strong friend in game or a with a group and Haven and Hearth had many villages but trying to join any village was impossible because of the greifers and trollers that would scare the villages plus the raid ohh the raids they were torture in a game with perma death my whole village was infiltrated by one idiot who gave away his hearth flame too a noobie account who stole everything and open the gates to let a warring russian village in to kill us all so from my experience for a game like this you should have a level cap on the combat lvling so no one person is stronger then the other so team work become vital in game play and lvling should be unique in game make the lvling system creative based off of not something that is not grinding maybe lvling up from eating the right foods or by learning new skills but not by grinding on monsters or other miscellaneous representative tasks also that stronger players cant so easily over power a noobie so easily the noobie should be given a time period where pvp cannot kill him untile a certain lvl or day after account creation so he cant attack other players and other stronger players cant kill him for the hell of it because there griefers and trolls so that noobie can properly learn the game and lvl up to a good enough lvl to enter the real world of pvp and perma death or something like that lol damn just noticed i typed a **** load .........

That's a long comment, but I can answer it with only a few sentences ;). (1) Permadeath will always be optional, it will be up to the server admin whether he wants to turn it on. (2) I hate grinding. Olvand will be about creating a gun with a playstyle that fits you, instead of creating the best gun by doing the same thing over and over. (3) If something turns out to be frustrating (like the things you described), I will of course change it.

Do you plan on scripting stuff as well? Cool things which come to mind are Goblin invasion in Terraria, or attacks on your town in Hinterland. Breaks up the pace a bit and I find it quite nice. "Oh CRAP! They are attacking my town!" often leads to some interesting running back to your home base!

Also, how multiplayer is this planned to be? Some of the features there look as if they will require a large number of players, particularly politics. Is this planned to start off small and grow into something a bit larger like Haven & Hearth?

Yeah, I've indeed thought a lot about scripted events (or maybe a simple version of Guild Wars 2's dynamic events), but I'm still not sure if and how I want to implement them. Maybe server admins will able to turn them on and off? We'll see what fits the game best. But it's going to be a very very distant future anyway (but thanks for reminding me of this!)

Definitely 'start off small and grow', but I really have no idea how small or big this is going to be. So for the political tools, let's just say that I'll implement them if the communities need them. If the communities stay small, I'll spend my time on something else.